


if you leave here, you'll only come back

by pinn



Category: Wilby Wonderful (2004)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:43:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinn/pseuds/pinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times (not very often but occasionally) when Duck wonders how exactly he got to where he is: a middle aged queer on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you leave here, you'll only come back

There are times (not very often but occasionally) when Duck wonders how exactly he got to where he is: a middle aged queer on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere.

He's hugging Emily in front of the motel, trying to make his body fit hers but Duck's got no clue how to hug a teenage girl. He gives up on hugging her the way he normally hugs, close but impersonal, and wraps both arms around her. Impersonal isn't what she needs right now and it's not really what Duck needs either.

If he was living somewhere else, he thinks in the back of his mind, somewhere like Toronto or Vancouver, hell even Charlottetown, he wouldn't have to deal with all this. He wouldn't have to deal with the small side-stares and the whispers about how his mother must be rolling in her grave. He feels a little piece of himself shrivel up every time he fights back the urge to say, "My mother was cremated, thank you kindly, but you're right, her ashes are mortified about her deviant son."

Duck likes to think that if he were living in any other place but Wilby, he would be going out every night with friends that were just like him. There would be no more fooling around in the dark with nameless faces, hoping to god that there aren't any patches of poison ivy around.

Emily sobs in his arms and Duck increases the pressure. He wonders if she knows about her mom and Buddy, if that's the reason she came here tonight.

It had taken all of Duck's self-control to not lean over to Buddy earlier in the squad car and say, "Look, you don't like your wife, that's fine by me. But have some respect for her, and stop fucking around with Sandra where the whole town can see you."

Buddy was never like that in high school. He and Duck weren't tight but everyone knew that if you needed answers to the math homework or help fixing up your car, you could go to Buddy. He wasn't the type of guy to fuck around on his girlfriends or wives or whatever.

Duck's willing to bet that Buddy's been sitting back lately, wondering the same thing as him, wondering how the hell he wound up in the same place he started out from. There's something about a parent dying that does that to you, Duck knows that much for sure.

Emily's quieted down some and she's not shaking anymore. Part of Duck wants Dan to come out of his room right now so he can see how Duck is comforting Emily. Duck likes to think that when faced with the proof of his ability to take care of people, Dan will be able to break past the walls keeping him in place.

The only problem with that scenario, he thinks, is that if Dan were to walk out of his room right now, he would glance disinterestedly at them, get in his car and go. When a man's about to be outed by the island paper, and his wife's praying that he rots in hell, he can be forgiven for being a little selfish, for not stopping to pay attention to the world around him.

"Let's get into the truck, huh?" He suggests. "Warm you up some."

Emily just nods and Duck leads her over to his truck. He's got no idea what to do with her now - now that he's saved her and calmed her down. There isn't really an instruction manual that could tell him, and even if there was, there's no guarantee that he'd be able to read it without fucking up the words.

It occurs to him, as he and Emily sit in the truck, that he's doing an awful lot of mooning around for a guy closer to forty than thirty but he doesn't know how to stop. Emily wipes her face off with his handkerchief and they sit in silence until Dan actually does come out of the room. He gets into his car without even glancing over at Duck's truck.

Through a fog, Duck hears Emily ask about Dan and Duck hears himself reply. He's not really sure what he's saying, just that he can't take his eyes off the spot where Dan's car was, and everything he wants to say, he can't say to a fifteen year old girl whose arsehole boyfriend just tried to get her drunk so he could have sex with her and then dump her.

Duck shakes his head and looks at Emily, really looks at her. She doesn't look too much like her mom but they've got that same personality, that same desire to prove everyone wrong. He knows he used to be as fiery as she is, after all he was a teenager once, but right now, he just feels old and lonely. Duck turns the key in the ignition and looks over at her. "Where to, kid?"

"I don't want to go home," Emily replies. "I can't deal with my mom right now."

"All right," he nods and tries to think of something safe they can do at nine o'clock at night. It's bad enough he's known as a queer, he's not looking to get labeled as a pedophile. It hits him suddenly and Duck smiles at the idea. "Are you any good at painting?"

Emily's brow wrinkles a bit as she answers. "A little."

"Feel like helping me with a little problem?"

Sometimes (not often) Duck thinks about leaving Wilby and moving to one of the cities, shaking off everything that this town has put on him. But there's only one flaw with that plan, and it's the same reason Sandra came back after all those years on the mainland. Once an islander, always an islander. All that shit that comes with being an islander is just something Duck's been dealing with his whole life, and he'll keep on dealing with it. Besides, he's got a good feeling about Dan.


End file.
